Mark is a Cabinet and Furniture Making student at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. He had furniture on display at the 60th New England Home Show in Boston. Mark was one of a number of NBSS students that were featured in a booth hosted by NBSS alumni Thomas J. MacDonald from Thomas J. MacDonald Fine Woodworking and The 207 Woodworking Community.
Mark also put on an excellent pen turning demonstration which he kindly allowed me to video. I am sure you will agree he is a dynamic a...

I was fortunate to have been given a lathe by my brother-in-law after he introduced me to turning pens. I have never used my shed for woodworking and I hadn’t worked on wood since the 70’s. I googled pen kits and found a starter kit reasonably priced and made the plunge.
The first two went pretty smooth. The third one split on me and required some repair work. I salvaged some small wood pieces left over from other pens, cut and glued them into place before turning to th...

Mark is a Cabinet and Furniture Making student at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. He had furniture on display at the 60th New England Home Show in Boston. Mark was one of a number of NBSS students that were featured in a booth hosted by NBSS alumni Thomas J. MacDonald from Thomas J. MacDonald Fine Woodworking and The 207 Woodworking Community.
Mark also put on an excellent pen turning demonstration which he kindly allowed me to video. I am sure you will agree he is a dynamic a...

Yep put together and made a number of pens this weekend starting on Friday after work. But before I get into that I mentioned last week that I had some glue ups drying in the shop for some shop items.
I know nothing spectacular, just some 2×4s with holes drilled with a forstner bit. But oh so handy; the small one is attached via pocket holes to my mobile workstation by the drill press. My hope is not to lose the toothbrush and pencils as often. The larger one is a bit more advance...

Well we had our second of 4 shows today. I woke up this morning with a massive backache (and it is still here), I can tell you I feel bad for anyone out there that experiences this on a regular basis. But anyway the truck got loaded and we drove down the street and I started to get things set up. Got everything in place.
It was a rather slow start to the day but traffic picked up and we came out well. Big seller today was more of my wife’s crayon rolls and also my pens made a gre...

This isn’t exactly a woodworking thing but thought some others might be interested in it.
Over breakfast yesterday I noticed someone reading the paper and a picture of 4 pens with some catchy title next to the pic – I got nosy and found out The Atlanta Pen Show was this weekend. I like to turn pens and I collect as well so I decided to head over this afternoon.
Nice place for some browsing and checking out styles, etc. There were (of course) many of the big name companies ...

This week pasted rather quickly with some snow days included but the good news is I got some extra shop time to finish my cleaning and have already started pulling things apart again. Was able to almost complete an order of wine tilts for a customer but still waiting for the garage to get above 40 so I can spray lacquer them. Hopefully tomorrow. May have to spur it a bit with a heater. I am sure some of you are aware it is Pine Wood Derby Season again, I had a friend call and ask if her son c...

Well as I promised last week I certainly have projects to post this week. I have been busy at milling some wood and putting it to use at the lathe. I actually posted 3 projects in a row earlier.
My daughter joined me in the shop yesterday to work on pens for her Kindergarten teachers.
I spent a few days going through my wood that I have had drying for a bit now and was able to cut pieces down for numerous ornaments for my coworkers
and some pens for others
I had great ...